China (Chongqing) Pilot Free Trade Zone

China (Chongqing) Pilot Free Trade Zone is a regional free trade area in Chongqing approved by the Chinese government. With an area of 119.98 square kilometers, it is home to three areas -- Liangjiang Area (core area, or Liangjiang New Area), Xiyong Area and Guoyuangang Area.

Approved by the State Council on March 15, 2017, the zone was officially established on April 1 of the same year.

Division of functions

According to the regional distribution, Liangjiang New Area focuses on high-end industries and high-end elements clusters. The emerging industries including high-end equipment, electronic key units, cloud computing, biomedicine and modern service industries such as headquarters trade, service trade, E-commerce, trade fair, warehouse and distribution, professional services, financial leasing, research, development and design are prioritized. The area strives to promote innovation-driven financial industry and enhance the clustering capacity of resources including logistics, technology, capital and talents.

Xiyong Area concentrates on building a processing trade demonstration area and developing manufacturing industries including electronic information, intelligent equipment and productive service industries such as bonded logistics transfer and allocation to optimize the processing trade mode.

Guoyuangang Area centers on building a multiple transport logistics transfer center and strives to develop services industries including international transfer as well as unitizing and allocating to explore the growth of innovation-driven manufacturing industry.

Advantages

The China (Chongqing) Pilot Free Trade Zone has five distinct advantages.

First, Chongqing has gigantic opportunities in western development. With the aim of implementing China's western development strategy, Chongqing is fully committed to establishing itself as a modern metropolis covering an area of 1,000 square kilometers with a population of 10 million, more than half of which will reside in the FTZ.

The second advantage is that Liangjiang New Area focuses on domestic consumption in its plans for development. Apart from current policies in the Pudong coast and the right to pilot implementation, projects invested in Liangjiang will also benefit from another five major inland policies.

Third, compared with coastal open cities, the elemental costs in Chongqing are lower, especially in construction, production and logistics. Moreover, the tax costs are also lower, because of various preferential policies.

Fourth, the two processing trade modes developed by Liangjiang New Area, i.e. "one end in and one end out" as well as "both ends in," elevate the utilization of foreign capital.

Last but not least, Liangjiang New Area adheres to the concepts of low carbon economy and independent innovation and works to strengthen resource conservation and environmental protection, which leads to better ecological conditions.

Enterprises

Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Shangtang Technological Artificial Intelligence, Jintaike Memory Production Base, Singapore Xinke Aerospace, American ARR, and Singapore Raffles Medical Group have settled in Liangjiang New Area.

Goal

By 2020, Liangjiang New Area is going to have 60 percent of Chongqing's industrial land (171 square kilometers), 40 percent of its commercial land (125 square kilometers) and 60 percent of its public land (108 square kilometers) and half of its population.